DOING IT THE LARD WAY

I am perceived as anti-turkey. I'm aware of that. If you launch a campaign to change the national Thanksgiving dish from turkey to spaghetti carbonara, you have to expect some fallout. In 1981, I suggested that on the first Thanksgiving the Indians, having had some experience with Pilgrim cuisine in the past, may have shown up with a dish of their own and that it may have been a dish their ancestors had picked up generations before from Christopher Columbus, of Genoa—spaghetti carbonara. When the Pilgrims rejected it as “heretically tasty” and “the sort of thing foreigners eat,” the Indian chief made a comment about the Pilgrims that caused the misunderstanding we live with today: “What a bunch of turkeys!” I hope it's a sign of my open-mindedness on this issue that I’ve recently developed an interest in fried turkey. I'm talking now about an entire turkey being lowered into several gallons of hot peanut oil or lard. Cautiously.

In the past fifteen years, an increasing number of people in southern Louisiana have turned to deep-frying as a way of making a Thanksgiving turkey that has crisp, golden-brown skin and white meat juicy enough to make a Pilgrim blush. The recipes for it tend to stress safety rather than technique; the “Prudhomme Family Cookbook,” for instance, says, “We strongly advise you to have a complete 'dress rehearsal' . . . before you begin heating the large volume of oil.” The evening before Thanksgiving, Al Dugas, a retired Baton Rouge banker I recently met, rubs a medium-sized bird with salt and cayenne pepper and then injects it with spices, using a syringe he bought in a veterinarians' supply store. The next morning, he heats up five or six gallons of lard in what I would call a two-missionary pot. The heat source is a portable propane cooker that an outlander is tempted to inspect for inscriptions like “Property of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.” After a turkey neck dangled in the lard has produced that satisfying crackle indicating sufficient heat, Dugas places the turkey in a fry basket and lowers it, cautiously, into the pot. Forty-five minutes later, he withdraws it. As Grandma traditionally says at the moment she presents her Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, Voilà!

All this happens in the garage—the customary place to fry turkey, although carports are also popular. A garage is a good place for cooking. It tends to be roomier than the kitchen. There's already a certain amount of oil on the floor, and there are a lot of implements that catch the eye—particularly if those present don't have much to do except watch one person watch a pot full of boiling oil. A good place for Thanksgiving cooking? There would be a weather problem in some parts of the country, of course; indoor turkey-frying is a serious fire hazard. In Manhattan, there also would be a garage problem: I can't imagine people gathering in those garages under luxury East Side high-rises to lean up against their B.M.W.s while tending a pot full of lard.

In certain parts of the country, though, it's easy to imagine deep-frying fitting into the holiday rituals. I can picture Dad and Granddad in the garage, carrying on their annual mock argument about the relative merits of peanut oil and lard. There's Uncle Earl piping up occasionally with some garage-inspired question like “You use that old ten-horsepower of yours much anymore?” There's Grandma coming in to coördinate the timing of the meal and saying, “Land sakes, that hot oil scares me.”

And how about the story of the first Thanksgiving? I wouldn't deny that it could be modified for deep-fried turkey. As I said, I try to keep an open mind. The Indians show up at the Pilgrim encampment and learn that turkey is to be the main course—roast turkey, although there is no oven in evidence. “You're making a big mistake,” the chief says, eying the huge cooking pot that the Pilgrims keep for boiling their vast and tasteless stews. This is the same chief who patiently demonstrated to the Pilgrims that the kernels are the only part of corn on the cob that is eaten. The Indians have brought no dish of their own, but they do happen to be carrying six gallons of lard, just in case. “Let me show you something,” the chief says. “But first we have to have a dress rehearsal.” ♦

Calvin Trillin has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 1963, when the magazine published “An Education in Georgia,” an account of the desegregation of the University of Georgia.